Short report "Lui in November 2013"

Started to write on this short report for some days ago and now, after reading Lilians blog about the violence in and around Lui, this maybe is not much to read…but anyway, here’s my words.

Happy New Year, all friends in Lui network!

Hope this year will be a better one for South Sudan.

Visit in Lui 17 – 28 November 2013.

We five visitors are from Lund diocese and we are all pedagogs. After Bishop Stephen's visit to Lund in 2012, we worked on a project that's about to be a child in Lui. Our purpose with this visit was to meet children, talk to them and try to find out how daily life is in Lui. The material that we now will start making is for use in groupes in Church of Sweden. Our focus during the stay was this project. We also collected things for a “Child in Lui-box”, things like a Lunjini-schooluniform, hairbrush, flip-flop shoes, flour and beans from the market, football shirt, even a small oven!

Together with Bishop Stephen we visited all 7 archdeaconry and the villages of Lakamadi, Minga and Kediba there we also visited the commissioner for eastern Mundri.

We met the members in two Village savings and loan groups, one in Lui and one in Lanji. We are very impressed of the work in those groups. The members can be very proud of what they have achieved so far. Lilian and Helen doing a great job with this.

We visited the Adult Education Lakamadi and Minga and there was a great interest among adults to learn, unfortunately, it was a great shortage of teachers. In Lunjini school the lack of teachers was big. But a number of girls from Lunjini have manage to get scholarship for Secondary school I Maridi!

Carpentry was not running, all equipment used in August, stored in a room at the diocesan offices

The garage was not running during our visit to Lui. Darius is usually busy running car. In addition, his generator has not worked in a long time

The guesthouse, where some of you have stayed during the visits, needs to be renovated and maintained. We belive that several rooms in the main building can be used after cleaning and some repairs. The same applies to some of the small guest houses. Several of the small houses have collapsed and stands only.

As the rain during September to mid-November had been good with enough water there was enough food for the people so they had their daily bread. Some got a surplus to sell in the market. But people need more variety of food. We met a nurse and a doctor at Cuamm and we talked about the problem of child malnutrition. This problem occurs because, they said, that there is a lack of knowledge on how to breed children right and to the mothers, many children too close together. We will later receive a report on the health situation in eastern Mundri from this organization.

Some tips if you 're going to Lui .

Juba was nice to visit ( uncertain situation right now ) . Many markand places with friendly crowds and a lot of construction in the city. Asphalt on some roads. We flew Kenya Airways via Nairobi and spent the night at the church's guest house (good and cheap). Drive to Lui is 140 km, takes 5-6 hours , at least. But you see a lot of scenery. Among other things, the little tree that grows around Juba and that it becomes more and more trees the further away from the big city you will = charcoal to the adverse impact .

It was hard to change to South Sudan currency during Friday - Sunday. A young man at the guesthouse helped us but there were limited resources. Important to have the dollars of high denomination, minimum of 50 dollar notes. The notes will be printed in 2006 or later. It’s also possible to change money in Lui.

A new surcharge was levied on us visitors, an additional fee of 175 south Sudanese pound(SSP) per person. This will be done Monday - Friday (Friday half day). Wasco Tadu had to travel Lui-Juba with our passports to get them stamped, If you have not had done this it costs $ 50 on leaving the country.

The price of fuel rose during our time of 1-2 SSP per liter to 6-8 SSP.

All five of us in "the educational group" are very grateful for the kindness and hospitality shown to us during the visit. We had to ask as many questions as we wanted to and think freely about the situations we saw. Ismail, George and Isaac accompanied us to where we wanted to go. Children, parents and teachers let us interview them about their lives. We got to see a football game and we also got to see traditional dance. We were well looked after in the guesthouse and Darius drove us safely in many mil. Bishop Stephen, his wife Lilian and Wasco Tadu (and certainly many more) organized our visit very well. For all this, we want to say THANK YOU!